Februar

You know, I'm a little disappointed that I only wrote four entries for January it seems like a bit of a cop out since I'm away and all. All I can promise is that I will try and post more about the trip later. I have now only less than three weeks to go before I get home and I think I'm torn equally between being glad to go home and wanting to stay another six weeks. Everybody here I have gotten to know over the past 4 weeks have all been very welcoming and fun and I am definitely having a good time. Especially considering there were times when I was rather apprehensive about the decision to spend 8 weeks so far away from home in such a cold climate and in an alien environment. But on the other hand, I miss home quite a lot. The Australian weather and landscape and all my friends and family. Plus I miss being able to understand what is going on around me, the language barrier is a quite a big thing for me. I mean I don't expect to be able to speak fluent German (or even near that) by the time I leave and my German has improved a whole lot since coming here. But when I'm out on the street/in a shop/public transport I still only understand up to 50% of what people say. It is frustrating. In class and with my host family I usually understand a lot more because of context and the fact they know that I'm still just learning.

Anyway am Wochenende I went to two different towns to see two different musicals namely, Wicked die hexen von Ost und Starlight Express. Both were really good and worth all the train-time it took to get their but Wicked was still my definite favourite. All of the songs and dialogue were in German, of course  but since I had seen the musical in Melbourne before I knew what was happening even if I only understood the actual dialogue 50% of the time. I had really come because I really like the songs from Wicked and wanted to hear them sung again in another language. So despite the language barrier it was really good.

Starlight Express wasn't as good, it was fun to see all the characters try and sing, dance and rollerblade at the same time but I thought the music really wasn't that good. It was all a bit bland and predicable.  The show was easy to understand because there was minimal dialogue and all the songs were in fairly simple language plus it's one of those musics that is basically all about the spectacle  and not about the story so there wasn't a complex plot. It was interesting to see all the characters rollerskating all the time but once that novelty wore of it was a little boring.

Also, now I have a whole bunch of programmes to send home. I'm going to have to send quite a few parcels to myself.